Too Good to be True
by Zayz
Summary: LJ. Two-shot. Fourth year, Christmas Eve wasn't exactly the cheerful, giving holiday it's cracked up to be - things happen, complications arise, and something slightly, sort of, kind of resembling a love story arises... R&R?
1. James POV

**A/N**: Yeah, I know, this idea's probably been done before, but I tweaked it some because I needed a Christmas fic. Even though it won't sound too much like it at the beginning, it really is a Christmas fic. Sort of. Just finish it and you'll see.

Takes place during the winter of Year 4. And read the whole thing before you decide I'm a loony-bin high on sugar. Trust me.

This **is** a two-shot, guys – this chapter has been posted on the eve before Christmas Eve and the next bit will be posted on Christmas Day.

Happy Holidays, my darlings!

Xx

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**Too Good to be True  
****By: Zayz**

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_James POV_

--

If only she knew.

That's the story of my life, really, if I think about it hard enough.

If only she knew.

Of course she doesn't. Lily is one of those girls who doesn't care enough to. It's the single most maddening thing about her (and I've got quite an extensive list to choose from), and yet it is the thing that draws me most to her, because if this is what she is without knowledge, imagine how she would be with it.

The possibilities are endless, _endless_, but they're nonexistent because she doesn't bleeding know.

Frustrating. It's all so damn frustrating.

I muse upon this in the common room, sitting here, alone by the fire with a mug of butterbeer on this cold Christmas night. Things are deathly quiet, because it's about four in the morning Christmas Day and the party ended about an hour ago. The sun should be rising soon. People high on firewhiskey have already crashed in bed and here I am, the only one here, drinking butterbeer wide awake and thinking about Lily, the girl who knows absolutely nothing of true importance.

Yeah, she's book-smart all right – she is at the top of our class and the teachers adoreher – but she doesn't know _me_. I want her to know me; and that's the exact reason she won't know me. It's a sick sort of irony, really, and Sirius thinks it's karma.

Me? I think the Big Guy Upstairs is just having his Christmas laugh at my expense over some heavenly wine.

It's sad, because I'm a bloke sitting down here by myself, and normally it's the girls who do that, thinking about how pathetic their lives are without some guy to knock up after they've been intoxicated well enough. It's been a girl thing through all my fourteen years – never would I have even considered the possibility of myself indulging in nonsensical self-pity before now – but there we go again, with the whole having-a-laugh-at-poor-old-James-Potter deal.

Sighing to myself, I stare into the dying fire and all I can think about is the fiery red hair of the girl I love. Her hair is the color of the orange in that flame, vivid and too hot to touch (rather like her, come to think of it), and Merlin, _if only she knew_ how she could make me feel. I don't know who made up the rule that guys are emotionless robots, but I certainly don't follow it. Anyone who knew Lily Evans wouldn't.

I drum my fingers on the arm of the sofa I am seated upon and take a hearty swig of butterbeer, the warmth of the drink spreading through my insides as only butterbeer can. And that's when I hear it.

The sound of softly padding feet coming down the staircase.

Curious to see who my company is at this strange hour, I turn instinctively and a figure clad in moderate pink catches my eye. I double-take just because I didn't expect this to happen, not at all, not one bit:

Because here comes Lily Evans, _Lily Evans_, descending down the stairs in her nightgown, barefoot and determined, right towards me.

The first thing I can think is holy fuck, where did she come from?! Lily left the party at around midnight, claiming to need to go to bed, so she should be sound asleep, not here, not with me, not when I'm thinking about her. I'm disarmed, not prepared for her. What could she possibly want with me now, when she refuses to catch my eye every other minute of every other day?

She sashays towards me with the grace of a dancer, her steps strident and confident, her hair barely rustling despite the speed she's coming at. I'm kind of speechless, watching her come to me; and instinctively, I stand up, curious, slightly shocked.

"Evans, what are you doing down?" I ask, because that's the logical thing to ask a girl when she comes to the common room at four in the morning. "Anything wrong?"

"Don't be foolish, you know exactly why I'm here." Her smile is mischievous – and rather alarming for it, if truth be told – and she stands so close to me I can soak in her soft, floral scent emanating off her body.

"Erm…" I'm at a loss for words. What am I supposed to say to _that_?

She puts a finger to my lips and her eyes twinkle with impishness that I'm not accustomed to seeing from her. Like I needed to be told to keep quiet; for the very first time in my life, I'm speechless, and she knows it. She removes her finger.

"I'm here," she says, slyly unbuttoning the first couple of buttons on her gown to reveal a hefty amount of cleavage, "because while I was upstairs, lying around listening to a party go on, I couldn't stop thinking about you. I didn't hear you come up when your friends did, so I decided to see if you were still here. Turns out you are."

I clear my throat, trying hard not to stare but failing miserably. "Erm, yes, I am still here."

She rumples up her red hair at my words, looking sexier than I could ever tell her in the strange, surreal glow of lighting left after the party. She takes one more step closer to me and I swear, I stop breathing for a second.

"Good," she says. "It's just you and me now."

A little confused, I must ask her, "Evans, don't you…don't you hate me, o-or something?"

I don't like to stutter, truly I don't, but her sudden appearance, her bold actions…it makes a guy who's been cursed many times over for even looking at a girl's arse just a tad nervous. And indeed, I'm even more nervous when a ripple of stark irritation passes over her face, her jaw setting in a way that means trouble.

"Don't call me Evans," she says, her tone unexpectedly strained. "I don't like it."

"What do you want then?" I ask.

"I want you to call me something else…like Lils, or Flower, or Lil…even plain old Lily would do." Her eyes are far too enigmatic for their own good. "Anything that's not Evans."

"Oh…kay." I clear my throat once more. "Lily it is."

She takes one more step and now she's so close we're almost touching. Her perfume is even stronger now, but it hasn't lost its beauty. She does smell bloody fantastic. I swallow and find my throat is actually very thick. Wow.

With a smile that would make Aphrodite jealous adorning her full, rosy lips, she puts her arms around my neck and whispers so quietly that my spine tingles and my stomach knot, "Thank you."

"D-Don't mention it," I say, awkwardly letting my hands rest on the curve of her waist. It's amazing that she hasn't slapped me for touching her yet. This is almost way too good to be true.

"You know…" Lily's face is right in mine, close enough for me to see every shade of those brilliantly green eyes of hers, and her breath fans out right under my nose. "James, you've always been a dashing sort of bloke."

"Have I?" I try to flash her a grin, but it comes out a bit weak, mostly because she is starting to play with the front of my buttoned shirt.

"Yes," she purrs in confirmation, her hands now starting to go to my hair. "I just…couldn't tell you so. After all the fuss I'd made before, how could I stand up and say that I was _monstrously _attracted to you? It wouldn't have done."

"I suppose not." I'm trying to play along and sound conversational, but she doesn't know how she's making me feel right now, with her hands all over my hair and her body pressing up against mine without shame. Merlin…

"_Of course _not." She holds my stunned face in her hands and presses her mouth so carefully on my nose, applying her pressure and letting go so deftly I'm left even more speechless. "But you know what, I'm tired of playing games. I'm tired of pretending I hate you; because the truth is, James, I don't hate you at all."

She blows in my ear, sharp and naughty. "Not even one bit."

"Bloody big waste of time, then," I say, rather hoarse as I move my hands up her back and pull her in even closer to me, "that you spent these four years acting like I was the bane of your existence. You and I could've been a fully-fledged couple by now, you know."

"I do know." Her velvety warm voice is now tainted with the essence of regret. "And I hate that I've taken so long to figure it out." She strokes my hair with the utmost care and presses her breasts against my chest, the feeling so perfect I could swear it was meant to be.

"But we're here now, aren't we?" She stares me right in the eye, her lips parted and her words barely there, the two of us so caught up in the intense intimacy we have that I have a hard time remembering it's four in the morning on Christmas day in the middle of the Gryffindor common room. "And I think that's all that matters."

"Whatever you say, Lils," I say, our foreheads touching and our noses grazing, breath intermingling in the distance between us while time somehow manages to both stop and stretch on forever.

"Exactly." Her mouth comes as close as it can to mine without actually touching me, the electricity between our bodies taut and filled to the brim with friction. "Whatever I say."

Her hands on the nape of my neck, she pulls me in at long last, and we kiss for the first time, every part of us touching, in our first clumsy exploration of the other.

Immediately, my blood surges and I feel a frenzy I've never known before. I know Lily feels it too, because the slow kiss we start morphs almost at once into something with primitive, animal instinct, fast and furious and needy.

Her mouth ravages mine and I ravage her right back, wanting her too much, far too much, but not being able to find enough of her. She's as close as I can bring her, but she's _not close enough_, and Merlin, she smells so good, she feels so good, she tastes so good, it's hard to imagine a creature of such perfection even exists.

I can't breathe. I can't think. Nothing, nothing matters, just me and my hot blood and her, all of her, our scrambling, hasty kisses surer than anything we've ever done. I want her more than she could ever know.

Overtaken by the strength of our kisses, we fall back against the sofa I'd been sitting at, glad for some place to rest and properly kiss. She doesn't skip a beat, her legs tangling up viciously with mine and her hands clutching my hair so hard it's probably going to fall out. My own hands are engulfed in the locks of Lily Evans, and she's all I feel, she's all that's here, my mind is blank, it's her, only her, and _Merlin_, I love her.

One of my hands is on her arse and I clutch onto it and she moans into my lips, making me want her even more, if it's possible. I'm drowning in her, she's it, she's everything, but I can still never have enough of her, can crave more, more, more of her. I rub her bum, faster and faster, like that's going to help at all, and she almost bites my lip in her haste to get her tongue in there.

I can't swallow, can't do a thing; our tongues are having some kind of ferocious brawl in both our mouths, and Lily's robe, I think that's Lily's robe that I'm stripping off to get to her shoulders. I feel her fingers at the zipper of my pants, my body is getting ready, I can feel it coming; Merlin, this is my first time, but I want it to be with her, I've dreamt for it to be with her, I don't want it to be with anyone but her. Eagerly, I try to kick off my jeans while she tries to both devastate my mouth and rip my clothes off. It's an exciting, liberating experience.

This is how it should be, the two of us together, snogging like this is the only moment we've got, loving like we are never going to make it off this sofa. We finally manage to get our clothes off, we're only skin on skin, I can feel we're ready, I _know _we're ready, Merlin, I love this girl, I love this girl, thank you for letting me have this girl…

_Oi…_

No, not now, not now. I kiss Lily harder, faster, and she responds like only a girl in love can – by kissing me so hard we nearly fall and roll off the sofa. My guts are wrung out and frightened, I think it's coming…

_Oi, James…_

No air, no thought, no anything. Just her. Just us. I don't want anything else, goddamn it. I'm almost there…

_James__!!_

What?

--

Right out of the blue, James felt a very violent pressure on his shoulders, jostling him back and forth almost desperately; and his eyes snapped right open. It took him a moment to get his bearings back, but his friend Remus Lupin was standing over him, torn between amusement and frustration.

"Oh, Lupin." James rubbed his eyes, wildly looking around. "Lupin, where did Lily go? She was just here, I swear…"

Remus worked hard to hold back his laughter and said, "Prongs, I'm sad to say it, but Lily Evans went up ages ago. It's four in the morning. Let's get up to bed – you look bloody awful."

Disgruntled and slightly pink in the face, James sighed heftily and accepted his friend's hand, standing up and stumbling with Remus up the stairs to his dormitory.

As they went, James asked, "It _is _Christmas today, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's Christmas, mate, and Lily rejected you yet again; so you not only got drunk off the firewhiskey, but you didn't go too easy on the eggnog either." Remus chuckled. "You passed out just as the party was wearing down."

"Did…did Lily say anything about me before she left?" asked James. "Blimey, I can't remember anything."

Remus appeared rather pained, but admitted, "You tried to tell her you loved her, and she blew up at you, and stormed upstairs early because she couldn't stand the sight of you. Hence the whole you-taking-advantage-of-the-available-drink-and-ending-up-here-daydreaming issue."

"Fuck." James ran his hand through his hair quite wearily as the boys approached the dormitory. "I blew it again, didn't I?"

"To be frank…yes, you did." The brown-haired boy clapped his friend's shoulder, his expression dry but still somewhat sympathetic. "Merry Christmas, Prongs. Better luck next time."

Remus walked into the room and James trooped in after him, exhausted and now brilliantly embarrassed:

He really ought to lay off the eggnog and stop dreaming quite so much.

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**A/N**: Even though the next chapter shall be coming up day after tomorrow, that is no excuse for you not to review. The button's right down there, guys – all you have to do is type me a little message. It's not hard and you'll even make my day!

See you Christmas Day.  
X


	2. Lily POV

**A/N**: I was in bed writing something else, actually, when this idea came to me. But when it came, I got all excited because usually, anything more than a one-shot taxes my brain. Christmas miracles really **do **happen!

This chapter takes place the same night – Christmas Eve, Year 4.

Enjoy, loves; and I hope your Christmas/holiday is very, very merry!

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_Lily POV_

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I don't know what it is about Christmas that makes me feel so bloody depressed.

I really don't know. Something about the endless rows of brightly-colored baubles, the couples cuddling up together and shagging in broom cupboards, the general idea that everybody is peppy-happy and the whole damn world is perfect puts me off. All of my friends call me a pessimist, but blimey, if being happy means I've got to get pissed at a party I won't even remember the next day because I can, then no sir, I'd rather be miserable.

I sigh, and look around my darkened dormitory, the moon being the only light shining down through the window. It's so quiet in here, and I like that, but I'm rather sufficiently awake, even if it's about four in the morning.

On a sudden, stupid whim, I decide to go downstairs to the common room; because the fire should still be up and I can rest in the comfortable chair until I'm properly sleepy.

Creeping down the stairs, I see the sorry sight that is our common room after the Christmas party James Potter and his friends threw, and I settle in on the comfortable chair in front of the fire. Just watching those flames dance and crackle before me mesmerizes me, makes me kind of sleepy, but I'm not all the way gone, so I sit and muse upon the party we'd been having since dinner ended.

Of course, it was loud and obnoxious and somehow, someone got eggnog and firewhiskey involved, so most people were pissed beyond their good sense. The music was loud and several couples mysteriously disappeared and reappeared throughout the course of the night, but it was James Potter, one of the four party hosts, that did the worst of the damage.

Perhaps I should've seen it coming. Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised it happened. But either way, I didn't see it coming and I was very surprised when it happened, which made the whole situation quite problematic – which is not such a surprise when it comes to James.

He did the usual – flirting with me, tearing me away from whoever I was dancing with so he could have a turn, giving me drinks and generally being in a right pain in the arse – and I also did the usual, which was saying dreadful things and pushing him away. It's our routine, what we always do. Tonight, it felt like we were going through the motions.

Until he did the unforgivable, the one thing he can never do, the one thing he's never tried in the four years he knew me:

He told me, drunken, swaying, in the middle of a crowd, that he loved me.

And I couldn't take it.

People say "I love you" all the time to people they feel the exact opposite for. It's not uncommon in the least. But I'm one of those old-fashioned people who still thinks love means something; and when you hate someone who tells you he loves you in front of all his friends, giggling and lit up by the artificial lights in the middle of a party, it's very easy to go off the deep end. Which I did.

I kicked him in the groins and shouted that he was a right cheeky prick, trying to win me over by corrupting the meaning of the word love. I said many other things and he ruined my night, he did, and I couldn't take it. I stormed upstairs and stayed there…

…Until I woke up and came down here to the common room, the site of the party which ruined my Christmas.

I sigh again and continue to stare into the fire, letting it take me in and wash over me. I'm in a pleasant half-awake, half-asleep existence, in tune with my own heartbeat and the hiss of the flames attacking the logs.

That is, I was before I hear the sound of someone coming downstairs from the staircase up to the dorms. Instinctively, I turn around to see who it is, and I see the person I really didn't think I would have to see for a while:

The sole antagonist in the story of my life, a certain boy by the name of James Potter.

He descends down the stairs with the quiet, padded steps of a cat knowing it needs to be silent in order to get this one, and I can feel my usual expression of skepticism burn into my features. I know this game pretty well by now.

"Evening, Potter," I say curtly when his foot hits the floor of the common room. "What are you doing here at this hour?"

"The better question, Lily Flower, is what _you _are doing here at this hour," James counters, smooth as anything, almost gliding down to where I'm sitting to sit next to me. I scoot slightly away from him.

"I dunno, I couldn't sleep," I defend myself, glaring at him as scornfully as I can muster at four in the morning. "I came down to watch the fire. Now your turn – what are you doing here?"

"I wanted to find you," he says without missing a beat, his almost feminine hazel eyes widening with his would-be innocence. "I wanted to see you and apologize to you for what happened tonight…it was out of line."

"You don't say?" I purse my lips, daring myself to stay calm. "You…you tried to tell me that you loved me."

"I did, because I meant it," he says, earnest but somehow gritty about the way he's looking at me. "I do love you – and you know, it may sound ridiculous, but I had a dream that I was sitting there, upset because you didn't know how I felt, and you came downstairs to tell me that you really did fancy me."

He takes a breath. "It was a dream I really wish could happen in reality, and even though I know it never can, it did get me thinking…"

"Oh, well there's a first," I mutter.

Ignoring me, James continues, "It made me realize that I really should tell you how much I care about you, despite what shit you'll give me about it. It would be a sin to pretend I don't love you when I really do."

I feel a bit of my carefully-protected heart melt just the littlest bit, but I am _not _in the mood to handle all this gushy-love talk. Immediately, I stand up and murmur some pathetic excuse as to why I must go upstairs, but he stops me right when I get to the staircase; he grabs hold of my wrist and wrenches me back, almost crashing me into the wall, but refusing to let me go.

There's a certain _something _about how he's looking at me now – a glimmer, a sparkle, the essence of his muted intensity – that softens me down the point where I do not actually want to kick him in his sensitive male organ. Instead, I simply snarl, "What?"

"Lily," he breathes, completely ignoring the tone of my voice, "Lily, honestly, what is so wrong with the idea of me loving you?"

He steps closer to me, his eyes boring into mine, his hand not yet relinquishing my wrist. I try to keep my expression as hostile as I can make it.

"The fact that it is _you _loving me, I suppose," I say.

"And why is that so repulsive?" The corner of his mouth twitches with what has to be a smile struggling under there. "Lots of girls would love to have me love them."

"Then go bloody love them, I'm not interested." I feel like a three-year-old declining what should be a very popular chocolate chip cookie. Not at all as feminist-glamorous as I would've liked.

"But _Lily_." I can tell he's trying to be very seductive, the way he's trying to breathe in my face and talk all soft, but it's not working. "Lily, I want _you_."

I chew on my lip, aggravated although my heart is accelerating quite alarmingly. "That's wonderful…but no, thank you…"

He can smell the victory on me. He can smell my reluctance to give my usual obnoxious rejection tonight. Don't ask me how he knows; he is James Potter and he knows everything normal people shouldn't. He smiles.

"You know," he murmurs, stroking my hair and pushing it out of my face, "you look beautiful tonight."

I feel the color rising in my cheeks; he's a foul, perverse, horrible child, I know he is, but tonight, I'm kind of tired and I can't help the way I'm acting. It's Christmas and he dreams about me and I dunno…no one's here, just us, and I'm not sure what it is about the lateness of the hour, the surreal glow of the lights, the fire crackling nearby, that makes this behavior unworthy of a hex or twenty. I'll just see how this goes, for curiosity's sake. It can be my good deed of the holiday.

Biting my lips, I let him snake his arms around my waist and I say, "Thanks. I'm sorry I can't say the same about you."

He smiles with mingled gentleness and impishness, and he pulls me in close enough to smell his cologne; then, with absolutely no warning, he lowers his face into the depths of my neck and I feel his lips and tongue marking my skin, slow and sweet. An unconscious groan escapes my throat and I find myself unable to shove him away and I feel James, _James_, smile into the junction of my neck and shoulder.

Slowing his way down even more so that each motion has the consistency of hot, sticky maple syrup, he kisses his way, savoring and torturous, up my neck and down the line of my jaw. He leaves ragged, feverish, open-mouthed kisses along his route and the frequency of my anguished moans builds with every passing second.

Oh, this boy…okay, okay, time to stop, time to stop, let's go back to bed and pretend this never happened. Good deed over. Abort mission.

But…I can't.

Hating myself almost as intensely as I hate him, I lean against the wall, grateful that I can rest and he grinds his hips gently against mine, creating soft but taut friction that puts me in overdrive, despite all my black hatred for what he's doing and how I'm allowing him to do it.

His weight is pressed into me, his hand is squeezing my breast, his breaths are heavy and heady, whereas mine are quickly becoming labored, rushed, harsh. I beg him in neurotic murmurs to do something, anything – preferably letting me go – anything to release the tight knot my intestines have become.

But he doesn't.

Still agonizing, he speeds the urgency of our hips and parts his lips right over mine, like he's going to kiss me richly but not yet. Our noses are grazing by each other, my navel constricted and my mind conflicted, but he won't, he won't kiss me _or _let me go, even though his lips are right over mine.

My back arches with want, our mouths trying to find the right slant with which to acquaint, but nothing happens, nothing at all. Seconds tick by, but all he does is push me against the wall just a little bit more, his one hand in my hair and his other sliding up my thigh with the tormented slothfulness of a young man heavily restraining lust that _shouldn't _be restrained.

The obvious tension is thick, almost tangible, and _Merlin_, I want him I want him I want him, but he's not taking me…

Finally, I'm unable to stand here, idle, any longer; I screw it all and instead of running away, I capture his lips in mine in one fluid motion, connecting us at last and bringing the charged intimacy between us into an action that will remain burned in our memories forever.

We have finally kissed – and it feels like nothing I could have ever imagined.

Even on our darkest days, I'd wondered what it would be like to kiss this boy who bothered me, chased me, harassed me all the time; and now I know, and it's stunning in the most enigmatic way possible.

Surprisingly, James doesn't run away with our kiss, doesn't throw me to the floor and shag me. Instead, he kisses me fluidly, beautifully, each kiss transitioning to the next with aching slowness, sharp and painful and, well, _sexy_, like he couldn't be before. My hand is on the back of his neck, bringing him as physically close to me as I can get him, just this once because it will never happen again, and even before our tongues are introduced, I feel my body screaming with blatant desire I've never experienced before.

We kiss and kiss and kiss, just us two, and this slow, smoldering dance of two mouths could go on forever, if oxygen would permit it. I curse myself for every minute I'm spending here, and in the frozen, numbed tundra my brain has become, I try to think of a good telling-off to do this justice, but there's simply nothing to say.

He's sensual, and he's overwhelming, and he's having far too much fun getting an upper hand on a girl who wants to pummel him, but I have to admit that he doesn't compromise me. He only keeps our motions limited to kissing and touching and grinding our hips with the same soft tension as before to keep our fuel burning.

As the tip of his tongue delicately, profusely, explores the roof of my mouth, I'm so lightheaded that it's impossible to go on. I separate us at long last, and his eyes bore right into mine, straightforward and sheer and honest. He doesn't speak and doesn't look like he's going to, so I dare myself to hold his face in my slightly-quivering hands and I whisper his name, "James…"

_Lily…_

I have to tell him this, I really have to. He tried to tell me how he felt tonight, but I took it wrong and now something is impelling me to say these words and make it right.

"James, I…"

_Hey, Lily…_

"James, I love…"

_Lily__!!_

What?

--

From where, she couldn't tell, but all of a sudden, Lily felt a hard slap right across her face and she awoke with a start, taken rather aback. It took her a moment to reorient herself, but when she did, the face of Alice Prewitt filled her vision.

"Alice? Alice, what are you doing here?" she asked, groggy and confused. "Wasn't James…he was just…"

Alice snorted. "Oh, so _that's _who you were dreaming about. Your expression was priceless, Lils. I should've taken a photograph. Hysterical."

"What did I look like?" Lily blinked a few times and gave her friend a rather hurt look. "I can't have been that funny, could I?"

"You could've." Alice has a hard time holding back her huge array of delighted snorts. "You were saying his name over and over and moaning…I'm sorry, but it was bloody amusing."

The poor red-head went about as scarlet as her hair, averting her eyes to the floor. "Oh," she said stiffly. "I see."

Alice petted her head and said, "Oh, don't worry about it, Lily. It wasn't as bad as I'm making it sound. It was pretty subtle, actually. But you must've been having one hell of a dream."

"What time is it?" Lily abruptly wanted to know, her brow furrowed with concentration. "Where are we at?"

"It's about four in the morning," Alice reported promptly. "You're in the girl's dorm, like you should be. You and I left the party a couple of hours ago after getting a sufficient amount of eggnog in our systems; I went down to the kitchens for a snack and came up right now. I saw you asleep here on this chair and you looked bloody uncomfortable – I tried to wake you up, but you wouldn't, so I had to slap you and make sure you were all right."

"Merlin," Lily murmured, her voice low. "I can't believe it."

"Neither could I." Alice giggled maniacally. "So, what was the dream about?"

"James Potter came up to me and told me he had a dream that I loved him, and I dunno…it was so strange, but I could've sworn it felt real…" Lily rubbed her eyes, exhausted and quite irritated. "It was nothing. Potter doesn't dream about me and it's all so bloody ridiculous. This must've been the result of too much Christmas eggnog."

Alice held back her snort with greater proficiency this time, but she couldn't hide her mischievous grin back as well. "Whatever you say, Lily," she said airily, twirling to her side of the room and falling back on her bed, eyes glittering. "Whatever you say."

Lily got up off the chair she was sitting on and went more sedately to her own bed, still a healthy pink in the cheeks. She got under the covers while Alice continued to lie there, thinking about something, and prepared to go to sleep for real, so she could wake up to her Christmas presents in a few hours.

However, before she went off to sleep, she turned to her right, facing Alice.

"Hey, Alice?"

Alice turned to her left to face Lily.

"Yes?"

"Please – next Christmas, when I try to drink eggnog, step on my foot and stop me. I don't need dreams like that one ever again."

--

**A/N**: Maybe the second part wasn't necessary…but I wrote it anyway. A lot of my readers always want to know if my one-shots will be continued and most of the time they're not. I decided that because it's the holidays, I'd finally add a little bit on.

Basically this is how it went, in case I confused you way too much (I slightly confused myself, so this is partially to get my own head straight):

James and the Marauders threw a Christmas Eve party and James tried to tell Lily he loved her, but she got upset and left. James stayed downstairs in the common room and had a dream about Lily; Lily was in her dorm and had a dream about James, pretty much simultaneously.

So, I do hope you liked this, guys, and again, Happy Holidays to you! The next time I post shall be January 1, 2009, and I'll talk to you all then! Be sure to have plenty of Christmas cookies – and eggnog! – tonight.

Xx


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